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This 58-room 4-star hotel in a restored palazzo opened in 2002. Modern rooms are comfortable, soundproofed and equipped with fax and modem access. The hotel offers parking, an airport shuttle and a restaurant serving Sicilian cuisine (see Il Cuciniere, Catania).

Located inside of Palermo’s defensive walls in an enormous, arched space is this bar, restaurant, bookshop and jazz venue all combined. There are cubbyholes for hiding out, a fireplace in winter and a terrace in summer.

Fresh food using prime ingredients of Sicily (see Kursaal Kalhesa).

Spend an evening in the cavernous spaces inside Palermo’s old defensive walls. Kursaal Kalhesa serves dinner on an outdoor terrace, usually offers live jazz and has a wine bar and contemporary art inside (see Kursaal Kalhesa).

This craggy old woman who declined an invitation to join the Three Kings bringing gifts to Christ in the manger regretted her decision, set out on her own, and has been travelling the earth with a sackful of gifts ever since. At Epiphany (6 January) she fills children’s socks with presents if they’ve been good or with coal if they’ve been bad.

There is no menu here, just a selection of whatever fish was caught that day and a few vegetable dishes. A good place in spring when the tuna are running.

At his bakery, master baker Tommaso Rizzo uses Sicilian durum wheat or the ancient tumminía variety to make breads leavened with natural yeast and baked in an oven fired with olive branches. There are also the delicious biscotti picanti – biscuits made with black pepper and anise.

Yachts bobbing in the small port can be seen from the 15th-century church of Santa Maria della Catena, while palaces of Palermo’s aristocracy line the Piazza Marina. In the centre of the lovely gardens is a statue of Garibaldi (see Giuseppe Garibaldi). The 1582 Porta Felice leads out to the Foro Italico and the seafront, for good waterside walks.

The name, the House of Tuna, says it all. In the heart of Favignana, site of the matanza (see Fishing Techniques), shop for canned tuna in oil and bottarga (dried tuna egg).

A local favourite, now in a new, larger space with a terrace and sea views. Try the roasted artichokes and local cheeses.